High End Touring

The Team Comp was Ritchey's high-end race bike in the mid-1980's. The frame was full fillet brazed with extra details (not seen on lesser models) added at the seat cluster, and a fillet brazed bull moose bar. The bar on mine has been replaced with a traditional bar/stem combo so that I can more easily run bar ends, but I still have the originals (currently on my other Team Comp).

I primarily purchased this bike to use for light duty touring, as it came equipped with both front and rear rack mounts. While the frame was intended for high performance racing, the rack mounts were optional from Ritchey by request. This specific frame was ordered to display the latest Blackburn racks at an east coast trade show, and was given the full compliment of rack mounts for that purpose. Additionally, the frame came painted white from the factory instead of the obligatory Team Red paint that was applied to most other Team Comps (some/all of the women's team race bikes were painted pink).

The Team Comp replaced the short-lived Competition frame in about 1984, and was subsequently replaced by the Super Comp in late 1986 (or there abouts). The major change to the Super Comp model was the use of Tange Prestige tubing in construction instead of Columbus tubing, also, the chain stays were slightly shorter on the Super Comp.

I built this frame with a mix of original and non-original (mostly early-1990's) components. I wanted to keep the original feel of the bike, yet didn't want to "trash" a lot of good/rare components while riding the bike, and wanted to make the bike comfortable for touring. The rear rack is a modern Tubus Cargo rack, and the panniers are made by Madden.

Without a huge number of miles on this bike with the touring set up, my initial impressions are that it works fairly well except in sandy conditions (of which there are a lot in my neighborhood). In heavy sand the front end wants to wash out (maybe that's partially the front tire), and with the higher center of gravity, the bike then wants to lie down. This is not really a "good" feature. However, other than deep sand the bike does well on single-track, pavement, and everything in between. I'm working on resolving the sand issue.

-el